Vendors' Ouster and Boycott Divide Harlem

By JONATHAN P. HICKS

Published: October 23, 1994

On the streets of Harlem, amid the maze of shouting pickets, besieged merchants, confused shoppers and curious residents, the Giuliani administration's move last week to oust street vendors from the area's busiest thoroughfare is generating passions unseen in years. It has also revealed deep divisions over whether the vendors' removal has left Harlem better off.

It is a question complicated by a number of factors. Foremost among them has been displaced vendors' continued picketing of stores on 125th Street, urging shoppers to boycott businesses not owned by black merchants. And with some merchants saying that their already-fragile businesses are beginning to feel the impact of the picketing and vendors saying they have effectively lost their jobs, there is no unanimity of opinion in Harlem.

Some politicians and business and development groups there praise Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's removal of more than 1,000 street vendors from 125th Street as a bold move to rid the area of non-taxpaying pests who provide no shortage of congestion and debris. And they also charge that by undercutting prices, the vendors damage the very businesses that employ Harlem residents. The boycott, they further suggest, is a misguided and racist response that will only damage the entire community.

Others among Harlem's residents and political figures revile the Mayor's action as a crude flexing of police muscle aimed at depriving street vendors of meager jobs that have kept them off welfare. Vending, they argue, has played a critical role in Harlem's economic infrastructure, having lured tourists in droves to a festive marketplace atmosphere. A boycott of white and Asian-owned stores, these people argue, will bring pressure on the city to allow vendors a place on the commercial strip.

The divisions emerged when the Giuliani administration dispatched more than 500 police officers to Harlem on Monday to prevent vendors from setting up their tables and urging them to operate eight blocks away, in an open-air marketplace designated by the city for vending. Within hours, a protest march ignited a confrontation with police officers and 22 vendors were arrested, most of them charged with disorderly conduct. By the next day, vendors, now joined by a mosque of the Nation of Islam, began picketing the stores, calling for the boycott.

Picketing appeared to intensify yesterday, as did the police presence -- with as many as 50 protesters and 150 officers along the two blocks -- but no arrests were reported. And at the site where the city wants the vendors to relocate, their numbers were also up -- but only to about three dozen, out of the hundreds who previously did business on 125th Street. And many store owners complained that they were now feeling the impact of fewer shoppers.

Because 125th Street is the heart of what is widely considered the symbolic capital of black America, the issue has become closely watched not only throughout the city -- where illegal vending continues in some areas -- but also beyond. As a predominantly black, brown and Democratic area of the city that provided little electoral support to the white, Republican Mayor, Harlem has continually scrutinized Mr. Giuliani's actions, frequently through the prism of race.

Indeed, race is often factored into discussions on the matter. While about 60 percent of the stores on 125th Street are owned by black merchants, an informal survey of the stores in the three-block area at its commercial core indicated that more than three-quarters are owned by white and Asian merchants. The vendors on the street are overwhelmingly black, including a growing number of African immigrants.

One morning last week, Julius Jay sat in his empty boutique, looking somewhat stricken while listening to the chanting of pickets outside his women's clothing store. "If these people continue this browbeating, they will scare away the people and we will all be out of business," said Mr. Jay, who is white and has operated his store for 53 years. "Are we feeling this?" he asked, pointing to the empty store. "You don't see any customers in here, do you? We hire black workers and this is going to hurt them."

Outside the store, a vendor who moved to New York from Senegal three years ago was seething. "They are taking the bread out of our mouths," said the man, who identified himself only as Salid. "We are suffering. And if we have to suffer, then the white and Korean store owners who have done this to us should suffer as well."

On the streets of Harlem, both sides are finding sympathizers and no matter what the category in the cast of characters, no one is marching in lock step. Some political figures like City Councilwoman C. Virginia Fields and Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright have hailed Mr. Giuliani's action. Others, like Councilman Adam Clayton Powell 4th and the Rev. Al Sharpton, have been harshly critical.

Some politicians say they have sympathies with both sides. Former Mayor David N. Dinkins, who wrestled with the issue, said yesterday that "there are legitimate gripes on both sides." But he added that a solution to the problem should be established, and enforced, citywide, with all sides taking part.

"I don't know that the way to solve this problem is to concentrate on Harlem -- with an expensive show of police force -- to the exclusion of other areas of the city where illegal vending continues every day," Mr. Dinkins said.

The Giuliani administration says it is planning similar relocations of vendors in the Bronx and Queens.

Mr. Dinkins said that many vendors operating illegally do not live in Harlem, or in New York City. But he said that "many people who work in New York City do not live in New York City, including 40 to 45 percent of the Police Department."

Leaders of Community Board 10, which includes Central Harlem, have steadfastly supported the crackdown and relocation of vendors. "We have been looking for some action like this on the vendor problem for years," said Barbara Askins, chairwoman of Community Board 10 and executive director of the 125th Street Business Improvement District. "It is a good thing to have 125th Street vendor-free."

But in the adjacent Community Board 9, which includes Western Harlem, Theodore P. Kovaleff, a retired dean at the Columbia University Law School who is the board's chairman, said both the merchants and vendors had legitimate concerns. The board voted on Thursday to volunteer to mediate the dispute among all parties.

"I have found sympathies on both sides of the issue," Mr. Kovaleff said. "The background of each of the major department stores throughout the country was one of starting with a pack on someone's back. That is very much the same as the vendor who is setting out with a table on 125th Street."

Mr. Kovaleff complained, as have some others, about the many police officers on Monday on 125th Street, where more than 500 officers were sent to assure that no vendors set up their tables. "When we've been yelling and screaming about the need for dealing with drug trafficking, we've never seen that kind of police presence," he said.

There are even divisions among groups of black Muslims. The Nation of Islam's Mosque No. 7, two blocks north of 125th Street, joined the side of the vendors' organization -- the 125th Street Vendors Association -- acting as an adviser and supporter of displaced peddlers. But on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 116th Street, another mosque, the Masjid Malcolm Shabazz, is a partner to the Giuliani administration, serving effectively as landlord of two asphalt lots with space for 400 vendors who are being relocated. Each is to pay the mosque $56 a week.

Street vending on 125th Street has been commonplace for years, a nuisance to some residents and business owners and an attraction for tourists and some shoppers. Indeed, they had become a fixture on 125th Street, with tables along the block selling colorful wares at bargain-basement prices, from tapes of Heavy D rap tunes and reams of ornate Nigerian fabrics to Timberland boots and videotapes of Malcolm X speeches.

Over the last decade or more, the number of vendors proliferated, from a hundred or so black Americans to more than 1,000 peddlers, with many -- some estimate the figure to be about half -- coming from West African countries. At the same time, the community board in Central Harlem, along with associations of business owners, civic associations and economic development groups, had pressured elected officials to reduce the number of vendors or remove them outright.

"There have always been vendors, but the complaints have grown dramatically over the last five years," said Councilwoman Fields, who represents Central Harlem and the Upper West Side and has championed the removal of the vendors from 125th Street. "Most people complained that the situation was just getting out of hand."

During the Dinkins administration, there was also an effort to relocate the vendors. Faced with a crackdown in 1992, dozens of vendors staged a raucous protest that disrupted business and traffic on 125th Street. A truce was called and the crackdown was shelved.

But over the years, a business relationship has developed between the vendors and the stores on whose doorsteps they operate. Some businesses stored the goods and equipment of vendors, for $150 to $200 a month. And some store owners sold their own goods on vending tables.

Many store owners, in interviews over the last week, said that vendors created some problems, like competition, trash and difficulty getting deliveries into their stores. But many said that the vendors helped attract an increasingly larger number of shoppers to 125th Street.

Some have suggested that the crucial opposition has come not only from merchants, but also from development organizations, like the 125th Business Improvement District, the Harlem Urban Development Corporation and the Uptown Chamber of Commerce.

"All of these elements together represent people who certainly have their gripes, but also are organized and contribute to political campaigns," said J. Phillip Thompson, an assistant professor of political science at Barnard College.

No one is certain how long the vendors will be able to sustain a boycott. But there seems to be widespread agreement from supporters and detractors of the relocation policy about one point, echoed by Won Duck Kim, the owner of Guy & Gal, a 125th Street clothing store: "Whatever happens from this thing, 125th Street will be a different place."

Photos: The police began removing illegal vendors on 125th Street in Harlem Monday as residents chanted in protest. (Steve Singer) (pg. 1); Monday -- Police officers arresting vendors on 125th Street; Tuesday -- Jabbi al Hagi, in white cap, registers for the new vendors market; Wednesday -- Vendors set up shop at a mosque at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue; (Photographs by John Sotomayor/The New York Times); Yesterday -- Vendors set up picket lines on 125th Street. (Nancy Siesel/The New York Times) (pg. 42) Maps: "A CLOSER LOOK: Taking It To the Street" Two blocks of West 125th Street that were long home to sidewalk vendors are now a site of protest. There are 66 stores in the two blocks, mostly on the south side; map shows the sites that have been picketed by the vendors and their supporters to press a boycott of nonblack-owned businesses. (pg. 42)